5 Social Media Truths

Being involved in gaming communities means dealing with a lot of drama. The most common problem I observe are people who have no capacity for empathy. It never occurs to them what someone might do back at them.

Here are a few truths I've come to recognize:

If you attack someone's livelihood, don't be surprised if someone returns the favor.

You have no right to anonymity. People should respect your privacy but don't confuse respect with rights.

Do not assume that you can attack the "Bigger person" with impunity. There is no rule that states that your target won't punch down in response.

If you dance around a dumpster fire along enough, you will get burned.

Don't apply rules to others that you do not keep yourself.

For me, these 5 rules have been a survival guide over the past three decades I've been online. As I once explained to a colleague, you cannot infinitely absorb abuse from people and stay balanced. You have to either redirect it harmlessly or failing that, make sure the perpetrator is given a figurative knock with a rolled up newspaper.

The counter-response, the one I've heard decade after decade usually involves "you have to ignore them". That sort of response only comes from people who have never been the subject of social media mob justice or someone dedicated to your personal, real-life, destruction.

One example of someone who got a harsh lesson was a friend of my wife who heard me complain about the review bombing of my book. Mind you, this book was released in 2010, long before there was any awareness of the concept of "Social Justice Warriors". In brief, a handful of people from a particular political forum wanted to make sure my "vile" (i.e. libertarian-like) political opinions resulted in me paying a price in real life. Sound familiar?

Now, back in those days, I was still firmly in the "don't dignify with response, ignore it" camp that our PR people always insisted on. So I just took it and complained to my wife and her friend. She insisted that I just had to grow a thicker skin and proceeded to write a glowingly positive review that quickly resulted in the dogpilers to turn on her. She became incredibly upset and raged "My family can see these comments about me!" and proceeded to delete her review. Doing so, incidentally, resulted in a long-running myth that my wife reviews our stuff.

But the point was made: It's easy give advice that amounts to "ignore the haters" but it's another thing to actually be on the receiving end of it. Which is why I live by those 5 rules.

Given the drama lately... how quickly do you destroy stress balls, fidget spinners, and your liver around opened bottles of high quality spirits?

TBH, it doesn't even phase me. Not even the slightest pang of anxiety. I take the drama and redirect it towards something else.

That wasn't always the case. Even after the defamatory Kotaku hit-piece article about me and my "sexual harassing" ways I still genuinely believed that rising above the fray was the proper way. Absorb the hate, avoid it, ignore it and they'll go away. Except, of course, they didn't.

By ignoring the defamation and "being above it" what happened was the people who pretend to care about society and believe they have a duty to destroy "the evil people" (now referred to as "social justice warriors")simply made that narrative the accepted narrative.

I remember when "#gamergate" happened back in 2013. I wrote a post "Define yourself or be defined". Back then, many thought their issue was obvious enough that it couldn't get twisted. That is: #Gamergate is a hashtag for people who want to prevent gaming coverage to be based on the fringe politics and personal, sometimes intimate relationships of the journalists in order to improve ethics in game journalism".

If your opponents are political motivated game journalists who genuinely believe they have a moral duty to change the world, they will stop at nothing to define you. So now, #gamergate is known as the hashtag used by alt-right, misgynists who want to keep women and minority out gaming and probably rape things or something. Or at least, that's what I keep reading.

So no, you can't rely on their integrity. Define yourself before you get defined. That's where the 5 rules come in:

Consider this from yesterday:

Nathan Grayson, the "journalist" best known for banging one of his subjects, works at Kotaku, the disgraced media outlet that effectively ruined my reputation with their defamatory "sexual harassment" article. Despite having been proven wrong, they actually self-reference to continue their narrative that we're bad.

Not everyone at Kotaku is a "bad guy". But when your labor pool are people willing to work for basically nothing in San Francisco you're not going to get the best and brightest.

But the irony of a Kotaku reporter using Kotaku's now discredited reporting as self-supporting evidence of us being a "bad company" was too rich to ignore.

Rule #1: You attack someone's livelihood, don't be surprised if they respond in kind. Will Stephen talk to Nathan? I don't know. Unlike most of the ilk over there, he's actually an accomplished journalist. I suspect, at the very least, he winced.

Here's a Rule #5: Don't set rules for others you don't follow yourself. Don't spew out hate into the universe expecting it to not return back.

This person, an editor as Mashable, decided to accuse us of "dog whistling" because we hired Adam Baldwin for voice acting (man, these guys are really going to go nuts when they find out all the other people we got to VO).

Here's an example of rule #3. Just plain ridicule of a wannabe journalist.

Here's a rule #1. Hayden here, made a tweet that said "Company with problematic views hires actor with problematic views". Not sure what views he thinks Stardock has that are problematic. Given the lack of diversity that exists on 2nd Street in San Fran (it's white male central) one can only guess what they think is "problematic".

When I asked what was problematic about Stardock this led to him alleging that we have gone through 6 PR firms in the last 6 years. Pretty sure that's not the case but I do know that we have switched up PR firms after the last few game cycles because the results were poor. Perhaps the PR companies did do their job but the SJWs they deal with are so corrupt they just refused to cover things their readers might want to know about.

This is probably more of an answer than you were looking for.

The points being:

1. Don't instigate Internet drama.

2. If someone does instigate drama directed at you, DO NOT try to absorb it, use one of the 5 rules to redirect it.

Most of these "journalists" have an almost irreparable problem with Rule 5.

They make their own rules and standards without ever even thinking about them being applied to themselves. The sheer amount of mental gymnastics it takes to operate like this is staggering to those of us who live and work in the real world.

Most of these writers, deep down, know their days are numbered as marketable and employable writers. They adopted manufactured outrage as their currency of choice, when in reality its closer to the last burst of energy in a dying, money-hemorrhaging medium. Last I heard, Univision (who owns Kotaku and every other worthless pile of deck associated with the corpse of Gawker) is potentially looking to sell their little expensive stable of snark and lies.

Hopefully potential buyers are either smart enough to avoid it, or maybe a wonderful angel will buy it for pennies on the dollar, wipe its stain from the web entirely and just bury it.

Most of these "journalists" have an almost irreparable problem with Rule 5.

They make their own rules and standards without ever even thinking about them being applied to themselves. The sheer amount of mental gymnastics it takes to operate like this is staggering to those of us who live and work in the real world.

Most of these writers, deep down, know their days are numbered as marketable and employable writers. They adopted manufactured outrage as their currency of choice, when in reality its closer to the last burst of energy in a dying, money-hemorrhaging medium. Last I heard, Univision (who owns Kotaku and every other worthless pile of deck associated with the corpse of Gawker) is potentially looking to sell their little expensive stable of snark and lies.

Hopefully potential buyers are either smart enough to avoid it, or maybe a wonderful angel will buy it for pennies on the dollar, wipe its stain from the web entirely and just bury it.

I think most of them know the end is near. The CBS building that Gamespot is in will probably be sold in a few years. There’s just not that much money anymore and that’s how they keep losing quality.

One of the most excellent journalists in our industry, Dan Stapleton, has had to spend the week cleaning up a plagiarism issue. Guy paid to play a video game was too lazy to even do that and write it down. But that’s the situation the gaming media is in.

Kids don't think twice that what even they are doing. The problem is no one there to teach them.

And you can pin that on the lack of father figures because of the destruction of marriage and the nuclear family. And you can pin the destruction of the nuclear family on... and so on. Go back long enough and you realize that everything that is happening today is connected.

Problem is, these days we can't rationally discuss these problems - so we can recognize the causes and come up with some valid solutions - without being immediately branded with some stupid label.

You will always find people who are willing to engage in petty and sometimes outright vindictive or even malicious gossip. The titillation one derives from the attention and bloated sense of self importance are just too attractive for some.

Let's face it salacious gossip sells because of the human trait of reverse envy. I am relatively better off when I can find those who are worse off than me and express my disdain for them and thereby confirming to my ego that these others can only be envious of me.

I can honestly ignore twats on social media because I avoid social media sites like the plague. My only online social connections are vhere at the Stardock forums, primarily Wincustomize, and that's all I need/care about. I don't even buy newspapers anymore, haven't done for 30+ years. I just didn't need or appreciate the scandals, much less the damned advertising on every page somewhere.

I can honestly ignore twats on social media because I avoid social media sites like the plague. My only online social connections are vhere at the Stardock forums, primarily Wincustomize, and that's all I need/care about. I don't even buy newspapers anymore, haven't done for 30+ years. I just didn't need or appreciate the scandals, much less the damned advertising on every page somewhere.

There is one problem with that: remember Martin Niemöller's "First they came for..." poem?

There comes a point where you can no longer bury your head in the sand and you MUST choose a side, while you still can.

Nope, sides aren't my thing, especially not when it comes to social media tiffs. Besides, my 'isolation' isn't burying my head in the sand. It's choosing not to read about or become involved in others squabbles and grievances, the back stabbing and sniping. I simply don't need the drama when I have enough issues of my own to contend with.

I'm not talking about social media tiffs. I am talking about what is behind all these 'politically correct' and 'virtue signaling' movements - and if you think those are limited to 'social media tiffs' rather than something infecting the very core of Western society, then you should start paying a bit more attention to what is going on, Starkers.

Yeah, the world is going/has gone to shit, and the core of society has declined everywhere there is. It's not that I don't pay attention, I see the entire world going to hell in a hand basket, but in my limited capacity to do much about it, I happily live in my own world and enjoy the isolation to the best of my ability.

There was a time when I gave a shit, but when a government threatened me with various repercussions for standing up for what is right, I shrank back into my own space and moved on. I now reside in my own world and try to stay out of the limelight. True, the outside world may oneday invade my space, but I'll deal with that when the time comes.

It doesn't get any plainer than that. The west touts their freedoms but ignore the abuses of those freedoms. Perhaps that's why the west is labeled as somewhat decadent. Social media does nothing more than allow that abuse in the form of hate and fear mongering. Anonymity allows people to bash, denigrate and otherwise demean those they do not agree with for whatever reason. Not getting into specifics but it all boils down to "If you ain't like me you're no damn good." My opinion.

Internet trolls, twats who take pleasure in deenigrating/harming others, only do so because their lives are total crap and they want to bring others down with their misery. That's why they are best ignored, because responding just feeds the pleasure they seek.